William HarrelCanon imageClass MF424dwCanon's imageClass MF424dw all-in-one (AIO) prints terrific-looking text and graphics at a highly respectable speed for the price, and its competitive running costs make it a great value overall.

Canon's imageClass MF424dw all-in-one (AIO) prints terrific-looking text and graphics at a highly respectable speed for the price, and its competitive running costs make it a great value overall.

A step up from the Canon imageClass MF249dw, a top pick, the Canon imageClass MF424dw ($349) is a little bigger and faster. It has more productivity and convenience features, such as a single-pass auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF), and support for USB thumb drives. Its paper-input capacity is expandable, making it an all-around more versatile and robust monochrome all-in-one (AIO) than the Canon MF249dw—for not that much more money. All that, and Canon's new three-year warranty, as well as lower-than-average running costs, are more than enough to elevate the MF424dw as our Editors' Choice for a monochrome laser AIO for low- to moderate-volume printing in a small- to medium-size office or workgroup.

Rich Feature Set

The MF424dw can print, copy, scan, and fax. It measures 17.9 by 15.5 by 18.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 35.8 pounds, making it suitable to reside on larger desktops, but I suspect that most offices will need to find the unit its own dedicated perch. In contrast, the Canon MF249dw is a few inches smaller in height and depth and weighs about 5.5 pounds less. The Canon MF416dw, a higher-capacity and more-feature-rich monochrome laser AIO, is similar in size to the MF424dw, but it weighs about 6 pounds more. The HP LaserJet Pro M426fdw and the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL, two similarly priced monochrome laser AIOs, are both significantly smaller and lighter.

As for paper handling, out of the box, the MF424dw holds up to 300 sheets of paper, split between a 250-sheet drawer up front and a 50-sheet multipurpose tray on the back. If that's not enough, there's an option for a 550-sheet drawer ($199), kicking total capacity up to 900 sheets. The MF424dw's maximum monthly duty cycle is 50,000 pages (with a recommended monthly print volume of 4,000 pages).

The smaller Canon MF249dw, on the other hand, holds only 251 sheets, split between a 250-sheet drawer and a 1-sheet override tray, and it's not expandable. However, Brother's closely priced MFC-L5700DW can handle 350 sheets from two sources, and you can upgrade it to 900 sheets, while the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL supports just 251 sheets and is not expandable. In addition, the Brother MFC-L5700DW's duty cycle is the same as that of the MF424dw; the Canon MF249dw is 35,000 pages less, as is the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL, while the HP M426fdw's is a whopping 30,000 pages more.

The MF424dw comes with a 50-sheet, single-pass duplexing ADF, which means that it scans or copies both sides of a two-sided document at once, up to 50 two-sided sheets automatically. Of the competing machines discussed here, HP's M426fdw and Brother's MFC-L2750DW XL come with single-pass ADFs, while the Canon MF249dw's and Canon MF416dw's ADFs duplex in two passes, one for each side of the page. Brother's MFC-L5700DW can't auto-duplex at all, meaning that you have to flip two-sided documents manually to scan the other side.

Then there's the MF424dw's 5-inch color touch screen, which, aside from the Sleep, Home, and Cancel buttons, comprises the entire control panel. Not only is it spacious and easy to use, you can use apps from Canon's Application Library to customize which features and options are readily available. There are several apps, and many of them provide shortcuts to workflow profiles, such as scan to a network drive or email, or print from various popular cloud sites and repositories, like OneDrive or Dropbox.

Connectivity and Security

The MF424dw supports Ethernet 10/100/1000 Base-T, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, a direct connection to a single PC via USB 2.0, and Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct is a peer-to-peer network protocol that allows your printer to act as a hotspot for Wi-Fi Direct-capable mobile devices, allowing the printer to connect to them without an intermediary network or router.

Third-party mobile connections include Apple AirPrint, Mopria, and Google Cloud Print, as well as the aforementioned print apps that allow you to print from and scan to various cloud and social media sites. In addition, you can print from and scan to USB thumb drives via the port located on the right-front of the chassis, next to the output tray. You also get Canon PRINT Business app, which, among other things, helps you scan to and print from various cloud sites.

Security features abound on the MF424dw. These include: access to the printer's onboard secure (HTTPS) website for monitoring and configuring the machine; Mac address and IP filtering for controlling where traffic to the printer comes from; Department ID Authentication to allow and control access to specific features via username and password. And of course, there's Secure Print, which allows users to print password-protected documents only with the correct PIN.

Over 40 Pages Per Minute

Canon rates the MF424dw at 40 pages per minute (ppm) for single-sided pages. However, like most Canon laser printers, this one defaults to two-sided (duplex) printing, or images per second (ipm, where each page side is considered an image). In this case, though, the company doesn't publish a duplex speed rating. (I tested the MF424dw over Ethernet from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional.) We test all printers that come out of the box ready to print two-sided pages in both duplex and simplex modes, which includes the other Canon models mentioned in this review.

The MF424dw churned out our 12-page Microsoft Word text document in duplex mode at 28.6ipm, which is fast, and at 41.3ppm for one-sided pages, or just over its rating. The Canon MF416dw managed 17ipm and 35ppm, respectively, and the Canon MF249dw churned at about 13ipm slower than the MF424dw in two-sided mode and 14ppm slower in simplex mode. Brother's MFC-L5700DW beat the MF424dw by a measly 0.7ppm, and the Brother MFC-L2750DW fell just over 5ppm behind. Unfortunately, the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M426fdw was tested under a retired set of protocols; thus, I can't compare its results here.

When I combined the previous Microsoft Word test results with those from printing our Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents containing color, graphics, and photos, the MF424dw's print speed dropped to 21.3ppm in simplex mode and 15.9ipm in duplex mode, which isn't bad for a printer in this class. The Canon MF249dw managed 5ppm slower in simplex and 4ipm slower in duplex, and the Canon MF416dw churned at about the same speed as the MF424dw. Brother's MFC-L2750DW and MFC-L5700DW managed about 6ppm slower and 0.3ppm faster, respectively, than the MF424dw.

In addition, while this isn't the type of printer you would print photos on, except perhaps when they're embedded in a larger document, I tested the MF424dw's photo printing speed anyway. It converted to grayscale and printed our two highly detailed and colorful 4-by-6-inch test snapshots at an average of 7 seconds, which isn't unusual at all for a laser AIO. Most of the monochrome laser AIOs discussed here came in well below 30 seconds on this portion of our tests.

Consistently Good Output

I've seen monochrome laser AIOs that print better than the MF424dw, but not many. Most of them usually fall down a little when it comes to printing grayscale graphics or photos. That's not to say that the MF424dw's graphics and photos are perfect, but they're good enough for most scenarios, including PowerPoint handouts and other prints designed to impress (as much as black-and-white can impress, anyway).

Both serif and sans-serif text came out well-shaped and well-spaced down to 4 points, the smallest font size we test. The decorative fonts we test looked better in most cases than I've seen from most other monochrome laser printers, too. Despite the fact that the printer had to convert their colors to grayscale, our business graphics (charts and graphs) also came out looking good, with only barely noticeable blotches here and there. For the most part, gradients flowed evenly, and dark fills were solid.

I've seen better grayscale photos from other Canon monochrome printers, such as the imageClass LBP251dw, a single-function model, but the MF424dw's grayscale images were better than merely passable. The only real issue is that all of my test images came out a bit too light, without a lot of depth and deep blacks, but they were entirely legible in that all subjects in the photos—people, objects, landscapes, and so on—were totally recognizable. The photos should work well, as mentioned, as parts of larger documents.

Respectable Cost Per Page

One of my ongoing complaints about entry- and mid-level laser printers is that they cost too much to use. Most printer manufacturers charge too much for toner for this class of printer. The good news about the MF424dw is that if you buy its highest-yield toner cartridge (9,200 pages), your per-page running costs should be about 2.3 cents, or about one full cent less than at least a few of its competitors.

By comparison, the Brother MFC-L2570DW's running costs are 1.3 cents higher than those of the MF424dw; the Canon MF249dw's are 1.2 cents higher. On the other hand, the HP M426fdw's are about 0.1 cent lower; the Brother MFC-L5700DW's are 0.7 cent lower; and the Canon MF416dw's running costs are about 0.7 cent higher.

These pennies and fractions of pennies may not seem like much, but keep in mind that a 1-cent difference will cost you $100 for every 10,000 pages you print, $1,000 for every 100,000 pages—you get the idea. The higher the per-page difference and the more you print, the higher the running costs will be.

As Monochrome Laser AIOs Go

There's very little to dislike about the Canon imageClass MF424dw. While its photo output could be a little richer, this isn't by any means a photo printer, and it prints what it should print—text and graphics—quite well. It's loaded with productivity and convenience features, such as a single-pass duplexing ADF and the ability to expand paper-input capacity and sources.

If cost per page is your primary concern, you should check out Brother's MFC-L5700DW (though it lacks an auto-duplexing ADF), or one of Brother's other midrange monochrome laser AIOs. When it comes to overall value and print quality in a low- to mid-volume home-based or small office or workgroup, however, the Canon MF424dw is our new Editors' Choice.

Canon imageClass MF424dw

Bottom Line: Canon's imageClass MF424dw all-in-one (AIO) prints terrific-looking text and graphics at a highly respectable speed for the price, and its competitive running costs make it a great value overall.

About the Author

William Harrel is a contributing editor focusing on printer and scanner technology and reviews. He has been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. He has authored or coauthored 20 books—including titles in the popular "Bible," "Secrets," and "For Dummies" series—on digital design and desktop publishing softw... See Full Bio

Canon imageClass MF424dw

Canon imageClass MF424dw

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